Screenwriting Seminar Features Dreyfuss

“If you want to get drunk, you make time to get drunk. If you want to meet your girlfriend or boyfriend, you make time. And if you can’t find time to do it, you’re not serious,” said David Black, a well-known screenwriter, who started his week-long screenwriting seminar in Kirkland House on Monday night.

It’s the same with writing, he said. Time and dedication are the name of the game.

“You have to put in the hours to get control of your craft,” said Black, who has distinguished himself through writing for television shows like “Law and Order” and “Miami Vice.”

And when some students in his workshop, which is open to all Harvard students and members of the Kirkland House community, say they don’t have the time, Black says he warns them that they will never have more time to practice their writing than in college.

“Most serious athletes train for hours every day,” said Black, who has invited prominent actors, writers, and producers to be guests in the workshop this year. “Most serious musicians rehearse for hours every day. So if you want to be a writer and you’re serious about it, you write for hours every day.”

Last night, Black’s two-hour seminar featured Richard Dreyfuss, who was a star in “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and John Debilles, who has written for “Seinfeld” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Dreyfuss and Debilles spoke freely of their experience with comedy, bantering about the merits of Andy Kaufman and praising Mel Brooks.

Then Dreyfuss took on a more serious tone about the value of comedy.

“Comics are known to be unhappy people,” he said. “As someone who has done comedy...you realize it’s a blessing. It’s a mitzvah. It is a moment when the pain ceases. Laughter is not our constant state.”

Dreyfuss and Debilles spoke to a motley collection of participants ranging from undergraduates to a resident tutor to a journalist.

An undergraduate at the New School, Ensa C. Cosby, whose father is the actor, Bill Cosby, traveled from New York to attend the workshop. Cosby, who said she is an aspiring novelist, called Black a “family friend” and a mentor.

“He’s been very generous with information, with helping students get their foot in the door,” she said.

Another participant, Siena T. Konscol ’08, said that Black’s workshop provides “really good encouragement to stick with the craft of writing despite all the myths that are going around about the industry.”

In an interview before the seminar, Dreyfuss said that screenwriting is a highly competitive business and screenwriters may often find themselves subordinated.

It is “almost impossible to actually get something out there. You have to know who you are in the hierarchy. And a screenwriter is not first,” he said.

His advice to aspiring screenwriters?

“If you want to get your stuff done, become a director,” he said.